Re: What's the origin?

: Does anyone actually know the origin of the popular phrase "Stop
Cold Turkey"? I know it is used to mean a sudden and complete stop,
as to "Stop smoking cold turkey" or to "Stop eating red meat cold
turkey," but I don't know how and when it was started. Any guesses?

TALKING TURKEY -- "Listening to America" by Stuart Berg Flexner
(1982, Simon and Schuster) has a big section on "turkey" including
why turkey is called turkey. ".Our North American bird was erroneously
named 'turkey' by European explorers as early as 1587, in confusion
with the European turkey cock, a completely different bird.Other
stories, that our word turkey comes from some Indian word for it,
or from the doctor on Columbus' ship shouting 'Tukki!' (Hebrew for
'big bird') when he first saw one, are not convincing." But getting
back to your question: "To talk turkey meant to speak plainly by
1830 (turkey gobbling was a distinct, natural sound on frontier
farms) and the expression soon became 'to talk cold turkey'; hence
'cold turkey' came to mean cold facts, unpleasant truths. By the
1940s 'cold turkey' was a drug addict's term for a sudden and complete
withdrawal from drugs (reinforced by the addict's goose bumps, resembling
uncooked turkey skin)..."